Art Baltazar And Franco Step Into The DC Comics Art Academy

Most of the DC Comics Art Academy videos feature one artist doing one drawing and talking about their history in the industry, their inspiration, etc. The newest DC Comic Art Academy features two artists… Art Baltazar and Franco, the guys behind the Tiny Titans. Baltazar sits down and has two characters drawn before the host can ask the firs question. He’s on his fifth before the five minute mark of the video. he also explains how character like Bat Cow and Robin Robin where his creations that he did before DC really knew he was doing them. Then he starts talking about growing up in Chicago, getting early comics and the Mego figures with the cloth capes. That was how he learned about most of the characters, through their figures before ever seeing them in comics. He hit 7 sketches in under seven minutes including Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman… and at that point Franco had spoken once.

Franco grew up on the Batman ’66 series and getting comics from the drug store, which meant often times missing parts of stories. Baltazar tells the story of a young boy who lost his sketchbook, so Baltazar bought one and drew on every page of the book, 220 characters, and sent him the book telling the kid he had to color them. In truth, the session kind of goes off the rails, but it’s fascinating to see just how many sketches they can do in the 20 minutes they are there. We do get to see Franco’s sketches at the end as well.

Has quietly been working at Bleeding Cool for over three years. He has written comics for Image, Top Cow, Shadowline, Avatar, IDW, Dynamite, Moonstone, Humanoids and Zenescope. He is the author of the Lucius Fogg series of novels and a published photographer.